New Directions on Old Connections: Body/Soul, Flesh/Spirit, Self/Other

Abstract

The articles in this special issue of Pastoral Psychology were presented as working papers at the fourth annual conference of the Group for New Directions in Pastoral Theology, which took place at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey on October 17-19, 2012. The papers presented at the three preceding conferences were published as articles in Pastoral Psychology (December 2010, June 2011, and August 2012). We are deeply indebted to Lewis Rambo, editor of Pastoral Psychology, for enabling us to publish the articles as a group. As our group continues to meet, we have an increasing sense that we are, in fact, a group—one in which we learn from one another. As in previous years, this conference had a theme: “New Directions on Old Connections: Body/Soul, Flesh/Spirit, Self/Other.” Our themes emerge from the concluding discussion of the previous year’s meeting in which participants are invited to propose the next year’s theme. Often, we have several proposals and these typically arise from our discussions of papers that have been presented. This year’s theme, however, emerged from a conversation that occurred in the minivan that several participants rode in together en route to Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, the locus of our 2011 annual conference, a discussion that focused on the fact that Christianity has historically tended to emphasize the soul and the spirit (sometimes using these terms interchangeably) at the expense of the body or “the flesh.” Yet, the church has also understood itself as “the body of Christ.” When this discussion was presented to the other group members, there was general (although not unanimous) agreement that this could be the theme for the 2012 conference, with the proviso that we also include the relationship of “self” and “other,” thus affording members of the Pastoral Psychol (2013) 62:545–547 DOI 10.1007/s11089-013-0526-8